I recently read on this informative thread about how Lucas seemed to be more oriented with light hearted stories and toy sales, which definitely explains ROTJ, TPM, and films he had a lot of control in. But something I noticed is, this seemingly does not explain why Revenge of the Sith is a darker film with a lot of taboo subject matter.
George has been on record to say that he believes SW is a franchise aimed towards children, and the tone of his mostly controlled movies reflect that. However, Revenge of the sith seemingly contradicts this line of thinking. I mean it seems odd to have a movie aimed for kids that has Anakin…killing kids lol
‘‘Star Wars is basically a serial for children - that’s what it’s always been" (Hoffmann, 1999: 7).’’ -GL
https://web.archive.org/web/20180422062130/https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2001/december-2001/kramer.pdf
Even so, some of the imagery in ROTS is more along the lines of horrifying, Anakin being burned alive as one of many examples. All of this makes for great drama, but why does ROTS seem to be a reversal of these beliefs that George had in mind?
Was there another chef in the kitchen so to speak? Did George try to do something out of his comfort zone?
Doing some research, I found an article that said Spielberg helped with some of the shots in ROTS https://web.archive.org/web/20050405211953/https://www.starwars.com/episode-iii/release/publishing/f20050330/indexp6.html
So is Spielberg to thank? Or is there another factor at play? Hope someone can help clarify and/or speculate, thanks!